So I did go out, took a bus and walked over to the area around Mama Buzz on Telegraph near the corner of 23rd, a two block alleyway sized street that runs from Telegraph to Broadway, an area I've walked many times during the day. Twenty-third was blocked off to traffic the short one block distance from Telegraph to Valley and lined with food, art and the other usual suspect vendors, a free lance juggler and three or four small bands performing on the sidewalks. OK, maybe I should have brought along a longer lens, I hadn't been sure what I might find.

Still, an hour's milling through the crowd, not going beyond this 23rd and Telegraph stretch, shooting the occasional shot, checking out the half dozen galleries from Mama Buzz to Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, a right angled distance of well less than a hundred yards. The crowd kept growing, filling with a couple of hundred younger, I would assume local people mostly in their twenties and thirties, the vendors at tables ranging from full time maybe able to earn a living at it mobile canteens serving what looked to be reasonable fare to younger folks who'd baked up a quick batch of cupcakes or such to make a few bucks. And most things in between. Art and Cupcakes. Seems right. Art Murmur time, here in Oakland.

Otherwise up about eight, to breakfast and the papers at eight-thirty (doesn't take me but half an hour to get dressed, take the various pills and scoot), back now on a clear sunny Saturday morning before ten. On a Fourth of July weekend. With no fireworks at Jack London Square again. A friend has a number of his jazz musician photographs being shown at an exhibition that opens later today in San Leandro, something I've been planning to attend. Takes care of the afternoon, anyway. Otherwise the weekend is open, opportunities abound: county fairs, street festivals and fireworks. You don't get this kind of thing in the winter months, best to take advantage of them now when I can. (Hup! Hup!)

Later. I finished the morning working on another page of Here in Oakland to be called, well (what else)?: Oakland Art Murmur, July 2nd and August 6th, 2020. As you see I didn't have enough photographs to fill a complete section, so I figured I'd photograph the balance on the first Friday in August. Which is why there's no link. At least I hope I photograph it then. Means all those headlines I created will have to be redone. Then again, not for the first time in this life.

I didn't make it to San Leandro, of course, but the official opening for the show is on the 15th and the show itself running through the end of the month. So I can still make good.

I did walk down by the farmer's market taking all of one photograph as I passed. I'd thought to go to the gelato shop near the theater for their half cupcake - half gelato special, but they were closed. Well, well. That had really been the idea, that gelato and cupcake special. A compromise then walking down to my morning café for something close to edible and now back feeling pretty much altogether crappy. This will pass with a nap, I think, the sinus-upper palate acting up, the eyes going just a very little bit out of focus now and then, the head just toying with the idea of becoming dizzy. Right to the edges. I need that nap.

Still, I got a copy of the letter my neurologist had sent to the physician who'd sent me, reminding me in reading I needed to get an eye exam to eliminate another one of the many things that can cause ocular migraines. He'd mentioned it at the appointment and I'd been thinking, well, I had a thorough eye examination not all that long ago, maybe it's not necessary, maybe the doctor would have caught it, if it existed, then. But I guess it's necessary to do it again.

I'm a bit out of my depth, here, the bill from the lab coming in for the blood tests today running $1,343.00. That's without the discounts the insurance company gets, but that seems a lot of money for a blood test. What's that hour in the MRI tube listening to god-awful noises going to run? I suspect I'll know soon enough.

And who knows, all of this together on a holiday weekend, maybe it has an effect. Ms. K passing away unexpectedly, maybe a subconscious bump telling us (again) we're in new territory here as we age, she two years younger than I. I hadn't communicated with her in well over thirty years and there's a certain level of insulation that comes from that, but in some respects thirty years is nothing. We were never supposed to be more than we were, but those were younger days when that was not often clear. So it adds to the load. You can always run, but you can never really hide.

So (babble, babble) let's take a look at this nap. Listen to the radio as I'm lying down. Let the head clear. Take some of these swell pills they give me for the sinus-palate ache and see if I can sleep.

Later still. Not a nap, exactly, but one of those fuzzy headed wander into the semi-twilight episodes that seems as refreshing as not after the fact. Nap light. Who knows, this could be more related to allergies than anything else since the lungs have recently been acting up. So many things to learn, so many maladies to understand, so much whining to be done. Probably best to go back and lie down again.